Arizona’s anti-gay bill is as outdated as a flip phone

Somebody has to be last. There’s always a final adopter, the lone holdout when the tide of public opinion changes.

PNI SB1062 rally

Opponents of the SB1062, a religious freedom bill, urged Gov. Brewer to veto the bill during a protest rally at the state Capitol, Friday, Feb. 21, 2014. (AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Cheryl Evans)

You know the guy — I’m sticking with my flip phone. It works fine for calls and who needs to read e-mails while walking down the street anyhow? It can be unintentionally hilarious.

But it gets more serious when you’re on the wrong side of history. When you’re the elected official blocking the door to a public school to prevent black students from entering, as Alabama Gov. George Wallace did in 1963, it can taint and define a career. As long as he lived, Wallace had to confront and explain that misguided moment.

Which brings us to Arizona. This week the Arizona legislature passed a bill that would allow businesses to refuse to serve gay and lesbian customers if the business owners assert their religious beliefs.

This is one of those flip-phone moments. There might have been a time, really not so long ago, that playing to the ultra-conservative wing-nuts with a bill like this might have been seen as a natural, but unfortunate, appeal to the religious base.

Those days are over. The tide changed, and if Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signs it this week — instead of vetoing it as sensible conservatives like Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain have urged — Arizona will stand alone, beached high and dry, as the tide surges in the other direction.

There are obvious problems with the bill. For starters, there are concerns about economic impacts, protests and retribution. The Super Bowl will be in Arizona next February, and the NFL has already taken a strong stand to “prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard.”

But just on the simplest level: How would this work? How, exactly, are we identifying gay and lesbian customers? Are we relying on “gay-dar?” Because just from personal experience in social settings, let me say it is not that easy. In fact, I’ve been wrong so many times that I have given up guessing.

There are also some bad signs for the bill’s supporters. Many will point to the recent developments in the NBA and NFL. Jason Collins has become the first openly gay NBA player and Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam announced that he is gay before the upcoming draft.

For Arizona, the worst news isn’t that these have been epic, bombshell announcements. It is that they have turned out to be not such a big deal.

Forty Niners quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who makes a point to say as little as possible in most interviews, shrugged when asked about a gay player in the locker room.

“No one cares if you’re black, white, straight, gay, Christian, Jewish, whatever it may be,” Kaepernick said. When you step on that field you’re a member of, in my case the 49ers, or the Carolina Panthers, that’s your job. That’s your occupation.”

Good for him, although he is far from alone. In fact, when ESPN polled 51 NFL players, 44 of them said having a gay teammate is not an issue.

And by the way, conspiracy theorists, let’s take a hard look at Missouri’s Sam. I’ve already heard from people who claim he was a “sure first-round draft pick” and now he’s dropping in evaluations because he’s gay.

The hard facts are that his performance in the NFL combine — the spring evaluation for NFL teams — hasn’t been terrific. His time in the 40-yard dash, 4.91 seconds, was nearly half a second behind the top times.

A good guess is that he will end up in the middle rounds, will go to some team, hold a press conference and then go on about the business of trying to make the roster. Check out Collins in the next few weeks. He debuted with the Brooklyn Nets. There were stories. And now he’s just a guy playing four minutes a game. No big deal.

Except in Arizona. Which just shows how out of step they are with the rest of the country.